


Losing You

by AnnieFey



Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-03-24
Updated: 2014-03-24
Packaged: 2018-01-16 19:53:43
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,425
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1359796
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AnnieFey/pseuds/AnnieFey
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><i>The air has changed, but Killian hasn’t opened his eyes. He is still trying desperately to preserve every aspect of her face, the light in her eyes, before the world breaks in on him and she is gone.</i> </p><p>Everything can change in a year. All he knows is that Emma Swan is the one person he can't lose.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Losing You

“We’re back,” whispers Snow White.

The air has changed, but Killian hasn’t opened his eyes. He is still trying desperately to preserve every aspect of her face, the light in her eyes, before the world breaks in on him and she is gone.

 ---

Killian does not pay particular attention to the plans being made, the inane pleasantries exchanged. This is not his land, nor his people, and though he would have been willing to give up anything for Emma, giving _her_ up had never crossed his mind. It’s strange, he thinks, saddling a horse well away from the others. This _feeling_ is strange, this emptiness. For a moment he wonders if someone pulled out his heart while his eyes were closed (his money is on Aurora, given their history), but as he reaches up, he can feel it beating in his chest.

The feeling. It beats through him like despair.

 ---

“You’re not coming with us?” Emma’s father watches him through steady eyes.

“You are a perceptive prince, aren’t you?”

David sighs. “Where are you going?”

“Listen, mate,” says Killian, unable to meet his gaze, not wanting to see her expression reflected in her father’s face. “The Enchanted Forest is your home. Mine is the _Jolly Roger_.”

“Hook, you don’t even know if it’s out there.”

“Regina told me how this bloody thing worked—that it returned all our belongings to this land, as well as us. That means that somewhere out there is my ship. All I have to do is find her.”

“And what if you can’t?” David sounds like Emma all over again, that stubborn reservation layered over ancestral optimism.

“I’ll just have to take another one then, won’t I?” He turns away, focusing his attentions on the horse. “ _That’s what pirates do.”_

“Huh. And here I thought you’d gone and changed.”

Killian mounts the horse easily, and when he turns to look at the prince, he doesn’t bother masking the caustic note in his voice. He suspects it has become a permanent feature. “I tried the hero thing. Didn’t take.”

Snow White marches toward them, tilting her head as she watches him. “So that’s it,” she says, and he feels all the weight of her accusation. “Emma’s gone, and you’re going back to being a pirate.”

“Back, milady?” He smiles, sardonically. “I’ve always been a pirate.”

 ---

Despair is strange; Killian can only remember having felt it once, when Liam died. With Milah it was different—he’d had something to hold on to then, black revenge that took root in his heart and drove him away from ordinary human grief. Being a villain was easy- revenge was easy- because nothing else mattered. And this is the crux of the problem, because Emma Swan matters to him. Because she insinuated herself into his life without ever meaning to do so, and made him hope for the very first time that his story might have a different ending.

Because he has inexplicably and irreversibly lost her.

For the first time in his life, he understands the Crocodile. They were two such different men, once—but then they went and changed their fates, gave up their hero dreams. Before his death, Rumplestiltskin said that Belle made him stronger, and Killian knows that Emma has done the same for him. She is his good form, and where Milah always seemed to bring out the scoundrel in him, Emma always, unconsciously, made him better.

He knows she doesn’t remember him, driving in that little yellow car so far away. He knows she’s lost to him, across that great universe of colliding worlds. She wouldn’t even know his name.

Perhaps he was never meant to be a hero. If despair is all it brings, he would rather be a pirate.

 

**ONE YEAR LATER**

 

The door to Emma’s apartment seems rather anticlimactic in its even shade of black, and Killian forces himself to pause before knocking. When she doesn’t answer immediately, he can’t resist knocking again, loudly and rapidly, and is almost surprised when the door swings open.

She is, if possible, more beautiful than he remembered, her eyes brighter and her curls longer than the woman whose memory he has treasured during this long year. He sketched her likeness countless times aboard the _Jolly Roger_ , only to crumple the paper up in frustration. Hours later, he would smooth it out and begin again.

He feels himself smiling as a rush of extraordinary relief crashes over him. “Swan,” he breathes, almost a whisper. “At last.”

As he steps forward to embrace her, Emma blocks him with an outstretched arm. “Whoah,” she says quickly, her voice defensive. “Do I know you?”

He had expected something like this. “I need your help,” he says. “Something’s happened, something terrible. _Your family_ is in trouble.”

“ _My family’s_ right here,” says Emma evenly, her eyes cold and piercing. “Who are you?”

“An old friend.” She’s watching him with bewilderment, and he steps forward. “I know you can’t remember me, but…I can make you.” Closing the gap between them, Killian kisses her. For a second she stills, and it must be working- it has to work- he can’t lose her again, not when he’s come so very far to find her—and then pain shoots through his body as Emma’s knee comes up between his legs and he falls back against the wall.

“What the hell are you doing?” she asks, bracing herself against the door as though defending the little apartment.

“A long shot,” says Killian, wincing in pain. “I had to try. I was hoping you felt as I did.”

“All you’re gonna feel is the handcuffs when I call the cops.” Emma is glaring at him now- an expression only too familiar- and he puts out a hand to stop her as she turns away.

“Look, I know this seems crazy,” he says, “But you have to listen to me. You have to remember!”

But Emma slams the door, and he’s alone again in the corridor.

 ---

He should have known she wouldn’t drink the potion. A year has passed, but the Emma Swan he knew would have had no qualms about handcuffing him to a park bench and throwing him in the brig; perhaps she hasn’t changed so much after all. And so Killian waits, patiently, for Emma’s curiosity to get the better of her. He is not especially surprised when his bail is posted—only grateful she’d come to her senses before someone tried to dress him in one of those ridiculous orange smocks. Seeing her on the street makes him smile; it’s ridiculous how she seems to have that effect on him.

But she still doesn’t believe him- she’s just as stubborn as she always was- and Killian begins to feel the stirrings of panic. She has to believe him. He can’t lose her, not Emma.

“As much as you deny it,” he says, looking her in the eye, “Deep down you know something’s wrong. Deep down, you know I’m right.”

“It’s not possible. How could I forget all of this?”

“I promise you there’s an explanation.”

“Not one that makes sense.”

He reaches into his pocket and produces the little blue bottle he’s been holding onto like a lifeline. “If you drink this, it will.” Emma is so bloody stubborn, and he doesn’t want to lose her—but more importantly, he realizes, he doesn’t want to watch her lose herself. She reminded him, once, of who he used to be—Killian Jones, a man of honor. Whatever the cost, he must help her remember now.

“If- _if-_ what you’re saying is true, I’d have to give up my life here.”

“It’s all based on lies!”

“It’s _real_ ,” says Emma, sounding like a little girl caught in a game of make-believe. “And it’s pretty good! I have Henry, a job, a guy I love…”

And he has to look away, then, because it feels as though someone has plunged a hand deep into his chest and pulled out his heart. The lost year stretches, impassible, between them. “Perhaps,” he says quietly, “There’s a man who you love in the life that you’ve lost.”

Emma’s expression softens, but more than anything, Killian doesn’t want to see her pity. He holds out the bottle, his voice returning to its normal cadence. “Regardless, if you want to find the truth, drink up.” She’s still looking at him, her green eyes unreadable. “Do you really want to live a life of lies? You know this isn’t right; trust your gut, Swan, it will tell you what to do.”

“Henry always says that.”

“Then if you won’t listen to me, listen to your boy.”

She gives him a long look, and he holds his breath as she carefully lifts the bottle out of his hand, their fingers never touching. Emma sets it against her lips, swallows, and for a terrible moment nothing happens.

And then she stumbles, and her eyes fly open. She stares at him, recognition slowly filling her eyes.

“Hook.”

He can’t help the smile that floods across his face. “Did you miss me?”

 ---

Emma has a steady supply of rum in her apartment, which is probably for the best. He needs a drink; they both do.

“You came all the way back here to save my family?”

“I came back to save you,” he says. It’s a statement of fact, not a declaration. She looks away, and for a moment they’re back where they were a year ago- planning, confiding, trusting- though beneath it all is tomorrow, and the knowledge of all the things they’re not saying.

 ---

She is bloody brilliant, amazing, and New York has clearly not affected her natural propensity for defeating rather strange and aggressive monsters. Though her taste in fiancées could, admittedly, be improved. He has some suggestions.

 ---

Meeting Henry again feels strange; the boy has grown in the past year, and it makes him wonder if they’ve all been changed, broken in places that can’t be repaired. “This is Killian,” Emma says, and his name on her lips sounds strange and bittersweet. He is touched that she has remembered his name, his real name. And yet he finds himself wishing, as he follows Henry out of the room, that she hadn’t said it. Because he is still a pirate in her eyes; his name hasn’t changed anything.

Somehow, in all the madness of falling in love, he had thought it would.

 ---

The drive to Maine is longer than he remembers, although distinctly more comfortable than being gagged and tied in the back of Tamara’s van. The conversation is easy, and as Henry drifts off, the car falls into an easy silence. Correatown is playing on the radio- Killian doesn’t completely understand how the contraption works- and the final strands of the song lilt through the air as he adjusts the fingers of his leather gloves. The closer they’ve gotten to Storybrooke, the tighter Emma has been gripping the steering wheel, and Killian wonders- not for the first time- what they will find upon arrival. Her parents, if fate is kind to her. And Neal as well, because fate has always hated him.

“Alright there, love?”

Emma nods. “Fine.” But she isn’t fine—all the weight of her lost year has been settling in between her brows, and her shoulders are tense beneath her red leather jacket.

Killian wants to pull over the car and hold her close, but he doesn’t know how the blasted vessel works—and even if he did, he’s not convinced his embrace would be appreciated. “ _I can see you haven’t changed_ ,” she’d said earlier, and Pan’s words- spoken so long ago- come back to him. “ _A one-handed pirate with a drinking problem? I’m no grown-up, but I’m pretty sure that’s less than appealing._ ”

He shakes off the words; dwelling on the past won’t do any good. She’s back, and that’s all that matters. Killian fingers a bottle of rum in his coat pocket. _Bloody hell._

 ---

Storybrooke looks like a perfectly preserved ghost town, and he has the strangest feeling that they are the ghosts, the strangers, the outsiders intruding on an idyllic world. Emma parks the car on the side of the road.

“It’s really back,” she says incredulously, “ _I’m_ really back.”

Killian comes to stand beside her. “As quaint and homey as you remember?”

“As _cursed_ as I remember.” She doesn’t look at him.

He clicks his hook into place, startling her, and she shoots him a look. “That’s more like it,” he says, grinning roguishly and rearranging her hair gently. “Isn’t it, Swan.”

 _I was in it for the long haul_ , he thinks.

 ---

Killian watches the window contemplatively. Emma and her parents have gathered in the living room, their family reunion morphing into a war party as the dwarves burst in bearing panic and mayhem. In their contemplation over the past year Killian is only slightly more knowledgeable, and a part of him wonders whether leaving the group so long ago has confirmed what everyone already knows—that he is a pirate, only out for himself. And really, can a person change? What is a year, after all, compared to three hundred years of piracy and revenge?

“Wait.” Emma looks up, her eyes suddenly wide with anxiety. “Neal—is he here?”

Her voice pierces his heart, and Killian turns away from the window, watching the way her golden curls tumble down her back. Light seems to find her, just as shadows always followed him. She is so beautiful. She always has been.

He has to look away.

“Well, we haven’t found him _yet_.” Snow’s gaze is full of motherly concern and affection.

“So he might have been taken, too.” Emma’s voice sounds composed enough, and Killian knows that she is trying to prepare herself for the worst.

“Smart money’s on yes,” says the dwarf.

“Leroy!” Snow shoots him a hard look, reminiscent of her daughter’s.

“He’ll turn up, Swan,” Killian says quietly from his post by the window. Emma turns abruptly to look at him, her expression filled with something wholly unreadable, and he finds it difficult to meet her gaze. “He always does.”

And Killian realizes that he truly does want Baelfire to turn up, because he is Milah’s son, and because he has always cared for the lad, and because the anxiety in Emma’s eyes as she asks about Neal is enough to break him. He was going to win her heart, once. Now it seems so long ago.

 _I can’t lose you,_ he thinks.

_I am losing you._


End file.
